Perhaps it was looking far too interesting and fun, so they pulled it back and attempted to make it as generic and dull as possible. I mean, hell, who wants to play a game which is fun? I know I don't.

natster43:Eh. I am not really interested in it now. It just looks so bland now.

yeah, that was basically my reaction as well. The new game doesn't look bad, just like a thousand other games. And the original trailer made me want to get invested in the characters, this just doesn't.

The thing is, both scenarios involve changing a perceived expectation. The Diablo crowd were expecting something gritty, and it wasn't up to their standards. Insomniac set up a light hearted premise and it's taken a gritty turn. And frankly, we're fine for gritty shooters. This could've filled a niche with very little competiton. How many quirky comical shooters are there on the market at the moment? The only one that comes to mind is Borderlands, and even then that holds a different market appeal.

Personally, I'm less enthusiastic about this now. Insomniac has a good pedigree of humourous games, and frankly I was excited for another one. I'll withold judgement until I know more details, because Insomniac have proven they are able to do gritty quite well. The Resistance and Infamous series were both excellent, and while Infamous did have moments of levity it was still a fairly serious affair. I'm more than willing to reckon this will be a good game, barring any interference from EA (I really don't want to jump on the auto-EA hate wagon, but frankly you can only judge a horse by the races its won, or in this case the horses it's hamstrung and sent to the glue factory).

Overstrike would've been a day 1 purchase.Fuse will be a wait and see affair.

Wow just wow I mean I know ruining game companies and franchises are EAs thing but even I have to admit I'm impressed at how quickly they worked with ruining Insomniac Games. It almost makes me want to buy their game, almost.

thanatos388:And always remember grit will always sell more than humor and charm, just ask MGS, WOW, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Obviously EA is such a genious, if only they were smart enough to take the humor out of Mass Effect 3 the one thing people complain about in the damn thing.

To be fair to Metal Gear Solid, as ridiculous and campy as the story is, the aesthetic has always been rather 'stylized grit'.

Why hello there, shall we commence with the buttkickary? WE SHALLPHA+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly8yNS5tZWRpYS50dW1ibHIuY29tL3R1bWJscl9scGJpYXVoaDhFMXFkNjBwZG8zXzI1MC5naWYiIGFsdD0iaW1hZ2UiLz48aW1nIHNyYz0iaHR0cDovLzI1Lm1lZGlhLnR1bWJsci5jb20vdHVtYmxyX2xwYmlhdWhoOEUxcWQ2MHBkbzRfMjUwLmdpZiIgYWx0PSJpbWFnZSIvPjxpbWcgc3JjPSJodHRwOi8vMjUubWVkaWEudHVtYmxyLmNvbS90dW1ibHJfbHBiaWF1aGg4RTFxZDYwcGRvNV8yNTAuZ2lmIiBhbHQ9ImltYWdlIi8+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly8yNS5tZWRpYS50dW1ibHIuY29tL3R1bWJscl9scGJpYXVoaDhFMXFkNjBwZG82X3IxXzI1MC5naWYiIGFsdD0iaW1hZ2UiLz48L3A+

I wanna party with those motherfuckers!

As soon as I saw the redhead in the trenchcoat in the trailer, I said aloud "Wow, I'd like playing a game as that character."

Then I looked at the screenshots.

I didn't even know anything about this game and I'm now disappointed about the change.

Wicky_42:That trailer was really quite fun-looking. Those screen-shots are not. Then again, it's perhaps not fair to bump those against each other, so I'll see what a trailer for the new one looks like...

It looks like this:

Not exactly riveting stuff. Especially not compared to the OverStrike trailer.

The thing is, both scenarios involve changing a perceived expectation. The Diablo crowd were expecting something gritty, and it wasn't up to their standards. Insomniac set up a light hearted premise and it's taken a gritty turn. And frankly, we're fine for gritty shooters. This could've filled a niche with very little competiton. How many quirky comical shooters are there on the market at the moment? The only one that comes to mind is Borderlands, and even then that holds a different market appeal.

Personally, I'm less enthusiastic about this now. Insomniac has a good pedigree of humourous games, and frankly I was excited for another one. I'll withold judgement until I know more details, because Insomniac have proven they are able to do gritty quite well. The Resistance and Infamous series were both excellent, and while Infamous did have moments of levity it was still a fairly serious affair. I'm more than willing to reckon this will be a good game, barring any interference from EA (I really don't want to jump on the auto-EA hate wagon, but frankly you can only judge a horse by the races its won, or in this case the horses it's hamstrung and sent to the glue factory).

Overstrike would've been a day 1 purchase.Fuse will be a wait and see affair.

I can get your point, but the whole "Diablo is too colorful now" argument was a tad bit ridiculous.

I'm a little less enthusiastic, but I agree with you, Resistance was a great series (despite the floundering of the second game, I still enjoyed its set pieces). Just a correction: Infamous was made by Sucker Punch, not Insomniac.

IGN:With Fuse's more photo-realistic visuals and altered story came new weapon forms and amplified violence. Enemies melt, explode into chunks, spray blood when they're cut, and wobble their backward heads after unsettling neck-break animations.

This quote seems to imply that their reason for changing the aesthetic was because they wanted more violence. Because clearly, color and smooth shapes means no violence is allowed. Just look at Borderlands, or TF2, or Mortal Kombat. Oh no. Wait. So-called cartoony aesthetics actually let you get away with more gruesome, violent things because they are less likely to put people off. Oops?

It's their game and they're the only ones who really know the full process behind the decisions they made. And if you compare the models' faces, it's not that drastic of a change in style - most of my problem is with the design of the suits and robots, which have that overwrought "we couldn't stop adding useless bits" look that plagues so much modern scifi. And honestly, you can still have ugly robots with cartoony models.

It's really not a deal-breaker, but man did I like the original style better.

Why hello there, shall we commence with the buttkickary? WE SHALLPHA+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly8yNS5tZWRpYS50dW1ibHIuY29tL3R1bWJscl9scGJpYXVoaDhFMXFkNjBwZG8zXzI1MC5naWYiIGFsdD0iaW1hZ2UiLz48aW1nIHNyYz0iaHR0cDovLzI1Lm1lZGlhLnR1bWJsci5jb20vdHVtYmxyX2xwYmlhdWhoOEUxcWQ2MHBkbzRfMjUwLmdpZiIgYWx0PSJpbWFnZSIvPjxpbWcgc3JjPSJodHRwOi8vMjUubWVkaWEudHVtYmxyLmNvbS90dW1ibHJfbHBiaWF1aGg4RTFxZDYwcGRvNV8yNTAuZ2lmIiBhbHQ9ImltYWdlIi8+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly8yNS5tZWRpYS50dW1ibHIuY29tL3R1bWJscl9scGJpYXVoaDhFMXFkNjBwZG82X3IxXzI1MC5naWYiIGFsdD0iaW1hZ2UiLz48L3A+

Wicky_42:That trailer was really quite fun-looking. Those screen-shots are not. Then again, it's perhaps not fair to bump those against each other, so I'll see what a trailer for the new one looks like...

It looks like this:

Not exactly riveting stuff. Especially not compared to the OverStrike trailer.

*sigh*

Well, that was dry. And completely incomparable to the Overstrike trailer. Colour me disappointed until further info is released.

I can get your point, but the whole "Diablo is too colorful now" argument was a tad bit ridiculous.

I'm a little less enthusiastic, but I agree with you, Resistance was a great series (despite the floundering of the second game, I still enjoyed its set pieces). Just a correction: Infamous was made by Sucker Punch, not Insomniac.

D'oh! Not rightly sure what I was thinking when I wrote that... Anyway, I agree on the Diablo front being overblown for what it was, but then again, I never played Diablo 1 or 2, so I wasn't invested in it. I love me some Ratchet and Clank though, and comedic writing is a strong suit of theirs. I hate to see potential wasted. We'll have to wait and see though. No sense getting bent out of shape until more information is available to us. Then we can get ourselves good and angry about their BETRAYAL!

The thing is, both scenarios involve changing a perceived expectation. The Diablo crowd were expecting something gritty, and it wasn't up to their standards. Insomniac set up a light hearted premise and it's taken a gritty turn. And frankly, we're fine for gritty shooters. This could've filled a niche with very little competiton. How many quirky comical shooters are there on the market at the moment? The only one that comes to mind is Borderlands, and even then that holds a different market appeal.

Personally, I'm less enthusiastic about this now. Insomniac has a good pedigree of humourous games, and frankly I was excited for another one. I'll withold judgement until I know more details, because Insomniac have proven they are able to do gritty quite well. The Resistance and Infamous series were both excellent, and while Infamous did have moments of levity it was still a fairly serious affair. I'm more than willing to reckon this will be a good game, barring any interference from EA (I really don't want to jump on the auto-EA hate wagon, but frankly you can only judge a horse by the races its won, or in this case the horses it's hamstrung and sent to the glue factory).

Overstrike would've been a day 1 purchase.Fuse will be a wait and see affair.

Small correction. Infamous was created by Sucker Punch, of Sly Cooper fame. Not Insomniac.

TheNaut131:Can I just sit here and cry about Izzy's design change? Even if she had the same moves, without that fucking coat it's just seems...empty

You speak truth. That outfit had tons of character and really distinguished her from the rest of the cast, and really livened up the stylized and fantastic nature of the game. The new screenshots... just look so generic. Just gotta echo my earlier sentiment, it's sad that this story is the first I've heard of this game and I still was disappointed by the new screenshots.

I'm going to be the odd one out and say that trailer not only made me not want to play the game, it made me wish chronic migraines on the devs and if was anymore "quirky" I may have had to garrote myself with a paperclip chain, while the screenshots look like something there is a chance in hell of me playing. Also: "With Fuse's more photo-realistic visuals and altered story came new weapon forms and amplified violence. Enemies melt, explode into chunks, spray blood when they're cut, and wobble their backward heads after unsettling neck-break animations."now THAT sounds like fun, if there is one thing I love its tasteless ultra-violence.

Aah, hmm, yes, I see.So what we have here is basically a "Reverse Borderlands" situation.

I guess visually distinct characters with their own personalities are not as interesting as bland samey characters who's only major visual distinction are their haircuts.Oh no wait, I'm sorry, one of the girls is wearing a grey jacket over her grey combat suit which clearly sets her apart, how foolish of me.

Not saying that the whole game will automatically suck because of this change, but I just really liked the original aesthetic.

The Overstrike trailer got me hyped for the game, but now itīs starting to look a bit boring. Probably the most generic looking stuff iīve seen from Insomniac. A shame, i really liked Insomniac and Racthet and Clank, those games all had a very distinct style. Fuse looks a bit bland :/, what was wrong with the cool style from Overstrike, is it really that bad to have colors and distinct characters in an action game these days?

Atleast Insomniac are good at gameplay, so it might still be a good game, but yeah.

If you read some of the horror stories from game developers, it actually sounds quite plausible. I remember reading about a production where they had a baby Hippo as the main character, when some of the clueless higher-ups saw that they said: "whereīs the mom, you canīt have a baby Hippo without a mom" forcing them to "fix the problem".

While I love Insomniac Games more so for the Ratchet & Clank franchise and less for Resistance (not that it wasn't good), I was so shocked and intrigued to see them basically marry the best of their top two franchises and combine them into some psychotic yet immediately likable love child and let it play with others. Overstrike was a delight and much needed breath of fresh air that video games needed in this recent stagnation of first person military shooters. I thought the end of such games was beginning when Boarderlands showed up and then when Overstrike was announced, I figured Insomniac would pave the way for others to follow suite and leave the other nitty gritty games behind. Leave to EA to ruin a hope for change. While I know it's still the Insomniac team that I know and love that's behind the story and I will still give them the benefit of the doubt because of it, it's still heartbreaking to see what would have been such an amazing, light hearted yet bad assed game succumb to the peer pressure of current game trends.

Insomniac, I really thought you guys were better than that, but if it's because of your wanting to go multi-platform, there's crowd funding for that now y'know. Your fans always support you, your colleagues always admire you and the industry forever respects you for your games, even as exclusives to Sony as they are so honestly, had you started a Kickstater or Rocket Hub to keep Overstrike as it was before it became "Fuse" and still go multi-platform, you know we'd have your back. Also, ugh, seriously you guys, "Fuse"? "Fuse"?! I don't know what worse about that name: The fact that it sounds so God awfully FPS cookie cutter that it hurts or that it suits far too well as to how much you had to cav-I mean "compromise" with EA and whatever their marketing "gurus" thought would make the game sell better. Last I checked your games sold themselves without having to change that much of your formulas so why would you fix something that was never broken?

*sigh* y'know what? I'm done. I can't keep ranting on about this, and I really shouldn't pre-judge this game before I can get my hands on it. So it looks like Battlefield with alien tech, and the mission hubs are similar to Call of Duty. So what!? That doesn't mean it'll be a clone. That's one thing I know for fact Insomniac would never do I mean, after all, Resistance ended for a reason: It was over and nothing more needed to be done with it. They know a dead horse when they see and smell it rotting in of itself. So, here's hoping that "Fuse" *shudders* still turns out to be on the Insomniac standard that we all know, love and hold them to as they do themselves...despite the generic soul sucked appearance it has now.

Kwil:Looks like some marketer saw it and went, "This doesn't look HD.. we need it to look HD."

"In addition to HD-ifying it, marketing recommends that we re-adjust certain visual parameters to capitalize on key demographics, and expand on possibly synergistic ventures with other EA Enterprises. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll put on my ray-bans, slick my hair back with a gallon of hair gel, making a sexist comment to your secretary while I saunter back to my luxury vehicle to do a line of coke! Also, if I don't like what I see the next time around, you programming geeks are so fired!"

And with that, Mr. Corporate takes his leave, satisfied at ruining yet another artistic vision. His eyes moisten, his lips tremble at the thought of all the money he could earn, all the map-packs he could release! Maybe, he thinks, he salivates, maybe this game will be the next call of duty! On the way out, he is sure to kick a poor orphan boy down the stairs, strategically placed there specifically so he could kick him down the stairs.

Well, that was dry. And completely incomparable to the Overstrike trailer. Colour me disappointed until further info is released.

Well, here's another trailer!

Admittedly, the game looks like it'll be fun. Still, I feel it would've been better if it still had the charm from the Overstrike trailer.

Thanks for the video,but it just reaffirms that they removed a bit of the team of psychos on a team together who against the odds pull off the mission anyway and are now just a squad who work together with special equipment few other people in the world have.

Side note: Hasn't it been a bad trend to name Shooter Games after there combat related trait? Like Frac/ture, Inversion or others in like them in the last few years?